I don't have the time to read all of the stuff you guys have been talking about, but I will offer one piece of anecdotal evidence: my wife.
Back in 2008, my wife started having some really, really serious health issues centered around her digestion. She tried EVERYTHING. She saw gastro specialists in two different countries, and EACH ONE told her something conflicting. I won't go into details, but it was bad. Really bad. Like, we thought we'd never be able to have children because her body was shutting down kind of bad.
My wife switched to something very similar to the whole 30 you guys were talking about before. She had a complete lifestyle switch, and followed the scdlifestyle.com guidelines. That's how she got involved in that culture of health - one which ecto is pretty much quoting from - and that's how I know viacariously what I know. Once she did that, life changed within 1 month.
The stories I've heard from other people are seeing thing like CANCER go away. Parkensons. Chrone's. ADHD/ADD. Outrageous degenerative diseases that don't even seem to have a connection to a diet have totally vanished from people that ascribe to ecto's philosophy. "Mountains of evidence" have been accumulated to attempt to prove very silly things in the past, and ecto's counterargument is pretty effective. Red meat from feedlots just isn't the same as grass fed beef.
But, honestly, I don't care. I don't care about studies or statistics or whatever - I have a wife who isn't dead and a new daughter, and I guarantee you that it had everything to do with the diet changes my wife made.
Anyway, that's all I'll offer. I've mentioned before that I try not to stress about it all. To me, reading studies by our medical profession is too stressful for me to really care - I have the answer living with me every day because she didn't listen to doctors who told her to eat more bread and that she just had IBS and that she just had to deal with it.
edit: Zircon are you doing whole 30? My wife "challenged" me to do it and I might give it a chance for the month of May. Let me know how you feel! I will give you this advice: When my wife changed her diet, about 3-4 days into it she felt awful. They call that "die-off" because your gut flora is re-balancing itself. DON'T GIVE UP. Give it at least 7-10 days before you throw in the towel (and after that long, you won't). And check out scdlifestyle.com - there are soooooo many stories just like yours.